Cataclysm
by Bildungsroman
Summary: AU: Because on the days when hatred is overpowering, the need to comfort overcomes all boudaries they can imagine. REVISED.


**To Whom It May Concern: I revised this because I felt as though it was missing something. Of course, all I own are my thoughts. Review and critique if you feel so inclined.**

Early one morning, approximately a few hours shy of the afternoon, there stood a small brick apartment building on the corner across from a run down library. In cracks in the pavement remained candy wrappers, marbles, and decomposing leaves marking moments in peoples' lives.

By mid afternoon it was all gone.

Because thirteen months ago multiple governments declared war on one another, drafted all able to fight for some guise of valor and honor, and began to level the land the world had worked so hard to create.

Though, as time moved on regions, faces, gardens, parks, opera houses, and school yards remained unnoticed and, though some turned to rubble, others just continued on. She finds her way about town and catches bits and pieces of the war on the radio and huddles about the television whenever they chance to acknowledge that there are bodies burning, rotting, putrid on the battlefield.

Quite frankly, she has no idea why she cares at all. There is no one she loves donning uniforms and carrying machine guns; only her roommate has a boyfriend driving tankers over foreign streets. But she finds herself drawn to the lives and passions of others and muses over sonnets in her head, wondering how the words would look on paper.

She finds herself so drunk with devotion to the way words are. Each day she wonders who it was that penned the first text and was so enraptured by the steadfast, rigidity of an l, the curve and flow of an o, or the sharp blade of a v. Who was it that loved them so and thus wrote "love" in whatever language or form it may have been in?

And she does not wish to tell the world of this passion she has for the written word, so she shall do it through impartial, unbiased text where the meaning hides stubborn and relentless amongst the lines. As she sits looking out a first story window, vision obscured by the close concrete, she needs to move.

There's a bit of sunlight accentuating the ever apparent peeling paint and dust fragments swirling about in the air. She starts hoarding everything in her closet. Articles, pictures, t-shirts, crumpled up bills, flowers, pens, sock puppets she has made with the children she cares for, jars they used to catch fireflies with, and lines she writes in which brevity is all she can manage. In her upright unconsciousness, her hand touches the pot of macaroni scalding on the stove and she chews right through her lip in an attempt not to cry. She cannot care for or deal with burnt hands, charred skin, and patchwork scabs on the body.

Miles away he imagines "Amazing Grace" holding fast the young men that lay stranded on the smoldering ground; comforting them until they murmur candid words to those they promise to come home to. Once he found a half life of some physical mutilation lying by the side of the road as he patrolled the army's camp. It begged and it breathed disturbing record scratches of words whenever it called for help. He found that he needed to manufacture humility and dragged the man down the dirt road by his foot until he reached camp. In the winter air billowing steam from his mouth like a dragon as he just couldn't find the strength to carry his comrade. A trail marking the couple's swaying waltz with blood. Of course by the time he pulled his comrade up to the general's tent the body proved to be unresponsive for obvious reasons: shards of glass and flower petals embedded in its back.

They quarantined him for three days due to assumption of insanity.

He has a home. And a name. Maybe it's Cloud; he can't quite remember. Now he's a number and can be summarized in a case study and insignia. But, that was hundreds of miles away and he cannot understand the strange dialect of these foreign places. And he cannot fathom why he's still here.

A few weeks ago he met another young soldier named Zack who spoke English well enough to understand him. Zack is from the opposite side, but found his country's cause to be wrong. He's a strong lieutenant with a good-natured attitude and a pretty girlfriend back home.

Now Zack's on the ground in front of him bleeding red into his black hair, and no matter what he does, Cloud just can't save his only friend. And he's sobbing and screaming at the other soldiers to find a medic, but they just look at him with a practiced sangfroid. They keep marching, and he picks up his friend's gun and dog tags when he dies.

He meanders through the country side with a helmet tilted down across his face; he's seen the world and everything in it. He's imagined the possibility, colors, and taxi cabs coming to take him away. The magicians on street corners while his life is weaving around telephone polls in unfamiliar cities; the ends of threads licking his heels. Tantalizing.

At night he visits comrades in the hospitals; the battles he hears in the distance unsettle his stomach and he empties its contents, caulking the divots in the staircase as he ascends lethargically. He makes the most of the situation on by finding the hope, glamour, and a spectacular wonder winding about the nurses as they bustle from patient to patient.

There are butterflies trickling out of cracks in the walls like seeping wounds and party balloons exploding every few moments in his eardrums. But, that means speculation and interrogation, so he'll keep that little tidbit to himself and continue with the remainder of his evening. He won't join the other soldiers; they're causing trouble in the alleyways beside the steel structures, begging people to hate them, cheer for them, vindicate their claims, and sing lullabies in their cribs at night.

Chipping the paint on children's rocking horses as his unit burns through cities; committing the image of blood arching through the air as it makes the slight 'pip-plop' sound of raindrops.

At meal time, he looks through the tears in the mess hall's tent and imagines taking to the sky on his fragile wings. He'll meet the air with such vigor that perhaps the sinews of his body will fall bit by bit in the atmosphere. His book needs to close; he needs the reassurance that it's not rolling ever onward with the notion that it's incomplete.

But there are moments when the fields seem to bow to him in the gusts of wind and he raises his arms like an Olympic champion, victorious before the adoring crowds.

Soon comes a pivotal moment in the war; a strategic maneuver to hit the enemy at its capital and turn the city into a crater. But this is wrong because he remembers this was Zack's hometown.

From the sky he and the other soldiers ready a bomb. There are minutes until it drops and he can see people on the street crawling like ants away from the unexpected invasion.

He wasn't meant for war; she wasn't meant to be kept inside. She went for a walk hours ago and from a hilltop she can see the city about her.

And the world is on fire. Her sector of the city is burning and some inhuman speed carries her down the streets as she screams at the sky.

The National Guard has responded, the plane is shot down, and the ground approaches before his eyes.

And she's crying, on her knees because her home isn't there anymore. And no matter how many times she hits herself this nightmare won't end. There was a little girl who lived down the hall from her with a kind man named Barrett; she's afraid to see them charred by the side of the road.

A half-mile down the street, the plane that dropped the bomb is a wreck and on fire. Its metal twists with an artistic flair and stretches high like the steeples of the cathedrals. She's sickly glad, but she forgets about that hatred and goes off bumbling to see if there is anyone alive.

Luckily he's yet to die. And though his leg has been burned badly, he's managed to crawl away into the gutter. He can't open one of his eyes, but from what he can see the other men in the plane with him were not graced with his good fortune.

She finds a soldier coughing up blood and in need of help. He finds an angel has come to take him away. In his halfway hopeful mindset, he mulls over the cliché.

He sees a pair of legs and a very beautiful pair of eyes speaking a flowing, foreign language; her face is red, he wonders if she's been crying. She grabs him by the arms and drags him into a nearby alley, tearing the sleeves off her jacket in an attempt to bandage his bleeding forehead. She speaks.

He knows she's trying to comfort him, but there's no way to communicate. He never learned other languages in his youth and now wishes he had so then he could thank this wonderful woman.

Because she's crying again, but trying to hide it, telling him everything will be alright though she sees the enemy insignia on his chest. And she wants to save him, but she can't because there's no way to know his favorite color, what he wants for a birthday present, or even if he would look handsome in those tuxedos she sees in the high-end shops downtown.

Parts of them are glad the plane is burning, but it's silhouetting the background with blazing wallpaper, stretching shadows over the streets like putty. He is partial to this knowledge that he is dying, but there are so many things he needs to do. And all that makes her sad is this possibility. At this time, what else can she do but love him and mourn? Mourn the man that could have come from building blocks. Love who he may have become and what person he may have been. The mystery and the benevolence of hope the chance holds as it ebbs in and out of his mouth as he breathes.

Though he understands. And as soon as he bleeds out she knows he's dying. He takes her hand and smiles while plucking like violin strings the dog tags from his neck and placing them in her palm. He curls her fingers around them and tells her thank you in his native tongue. She nods and finds it so strange, so tragically beautiful to be the last physical comfort for this man she doesn't know. Because, who will care of this meeting of formerly misanthropic strangers?

Soon she sees that this is just a body now; just a shell. There's people to be found and an unrecognized, young man to be honored. So, she tucks the small trinket he gave her into her back pocket, picks up her now sleeveless jacket, and runs away.

When they find him, he's quite the sight. A star covered sleeve tied around his head and an indecisive troubled look etching his mouth. His identification is gone, so they have no way of knowing who this soldier who fought for them is. But, no matter, this is just one young man. He chose this fate the day he enlisted. There are others; he's no different. Just another man who died all alone, a man who they figure no one cared to comfort.


End file.
